


after the ravens (i'll be home with you)

by guide_to_the_galaxy



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Multi, OT3, Paranormal, capriltello, in which casey meets two ridiculously amazing ghost-hunting dorks, mystery gang au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 15:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13343916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guide_to_the_galaxy/pseuds/guide_to_the_galaxy
Summary: Casey is grieving and heartbroken when he meets the two loves of his life. In a graveyard. Hunting down a ghost.





	after the ravens (i'll be home with you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Werepirechick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/gifts).



> A somewhat spoopy capriltello fic! A human, mystery gang au for the lovely Werepirechick! Casey is First Nation, April is African American and Dee is Blasian

Three-hundred sixty-five days, two hours and eleven minutes into the past Casey is sixteen and his heart is broken, suit wrinkled and eyes red rimmed; a boy growing up too fast, when he finds the two most amazing things in his entire world, and a meaning to his life that, if it even existed anyway, he would call magical. 

Fresh grief was hard to maneuver around, to sort out, so he sits on the wet bench that overlooked his mom’s grave, hearing the kids trick or treating around the neighborhood.  He finds the two loves of his life in the middle of a graveyard with shovels and flashlights and a gameboy, creeping around in the rain and dirt and unweeded flowers. 

And when he asks them, throat torn and raw from emotion, they tell him they’re looking for ghosts because there was one haunting a deli a few blocks away and its origin was coming directly from a coffin sitting about six feet below their feet (“give or take a few inches” the one in aviator glasses shrugs, reading this homemade poltergeist tracker).

And that was pretty metal.

And Casey grabs a shovel.

Three-hundred sixty-five days, two hours and eleven minutes later he’s sitting in their Volkswagen, clutching a backpack full of things to use to _not_ die in the woods, and his mother’s necklace.

* * *

 

  
**October 31, 1982**

“Oh shit, oh sit, shit shit _shit!”_ Casey’s feet pounds the broken twigs and mud and fallen red leaves, and his breath pushes out into the cool night, visible like April’s cigarette smoke, evaporating up to the moonlight, “Guys? This kinda…sucks, where-”

“Shut up Jones and try to breathe- please. There’s nothing here…not yet anyway,” Dee’s voice fills Casey’s ears through his headphones, disappearing into static before fading back into clarity, and he can’t not listen to Donnie when he says it like that. He tries to breathe, eyes on the full moon, almost red through the branches of bare trees.

“Good,” Donnie says, and Casey pops another bubble gum in his mouth; helps with the nerves, “Now I can kinda see everything you’re doing so…it’s like I’m right out there, okay? If you need me t-”

“Jeez, Don, I’m not _two-_ just got shaken up a bit ‘s all.”

“Okay, be an asshole about it, I’ll just sign off and see how April’s doing and maybe- _maybe_ check on you later.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Love you too, Jones.”

Casey kinda wishes Dee would stay and talk to him more, about anything, maybe. The banter was actually helping settle his heartbeat into a dull throb under the sweater April insisted all of them wear, after all, they were practically an undercover business now, solving crimes no one else wanted to, hunting ghosts and possessed dolls and crazy, scary shit like that. And lately there’d been something about birds that seemed to bug everyone, seeing as their whole family would have an awful case of terrible bad luck if one appeared at their doors. 

Every Friday there was this distinct crowing of a raven, and the lights of an unsuspecting house on a cute little street would flicker and the family’s scream was burned into the brains of the neighborhood.

Every Friday night.

And now it was Halloween, Friday the 31st. Dee had it in his bones they’d catch the guy tonight.

Some people, like Kurtzman who had an eye pecked out, said the raven who speak the name of its victims right before it attacked, and Casey used to think superstitions were all fictitious. Of course, that was before he discovered the ghost of the deli owner’s wife the first night he met April and Donnie.

The wind howls, dancing through the gaps, scraping the wood and carrying leaves into the sky, dropping them back like snowflakes onto the ground. They fall in Casey’s hair as he follows the blimp on Donnie’s gameboy; apparently wherever these strange creatures come from, it’s pointing to the center of the woods, deep into the heart of it, where peculiar and deadly things happened. Avery Winston went missing around the same time Casey’s mother died and there’s gotta be a ton of rumors about it (some too wild for casey to think about, others so gruesome and ugly…that they’re probably closer to truth than anything) and all they found was a shoe and an old doctor’s mask. Could’ve meant anything.

Casey thinks about Avery Winston and remembers his mom, making him go over and bring some bread pudding or wopaji or a card or something that would never fill the void of Avery, and closes his eyes, slowing his pace so he could hear the sticks break under his worn out sneakers, the wind rushing through his hair; he knows Donnie’s watching. But Dee’s smart, and he gets loss just as much as Casey does.

In the eerie stillness of the night, their are children laughing where the light is, behind him, outside the woods. And every step Casey takes away from it, their voices warp, the laughter turning to garbled chokes. The shift tightens Casey’s chest as he lifts his walkie-talkie, “Dee…? April? Guys, I’m losing my shit,” he wheezes,  clutching the walkie-talkie, looking around the branches.

From Donnie’s end is static and ragged breaths, April’s is silent.

His fingers unwind as he lowers his hand at his side, staring down to the blimp, his directly at the center.

A buzzing enters his head, filling his body till he’s shaking, vision blurring briefly. And as the world tilts, Casey looks up and stares into black eyes, around them is a mask of rusted metal, and a beak that cracked along the edges.

* * *

 

  
_Oh Casey Jones….you’re not yet a man…_

_You’ve come looking for trouble in such wrong places no no, no, no, no, no, no, no_

_You have no idea? You love them and I’ll take them because you are being bad, so bad, not behaving, trouble, you’re in trouble….now them?_

_Casey…._

_Casey? Arnold Casey Jones?!_

* * *

  
Casey gasps awake, jolting up just as hands keep him down, and vaguely, he makes out the ceiling of April’s van, and her brown eyes, braids dangling in his face as she tries to control her own breathing, staring down into his. She has blood on her, under her nails and dried tear tracks down her muddy cheeks.

“Wow..,” Casey breathes, cracking a grin, because no matter how many times he’s almost killed or hunted or scared out of his fucking mind, she will always be amazing- they will always be amazing, April, Donnie, and maybe sometimes, him- and April scoffs, straightening herself out as Donnie takes her place, grabbing Casey by the chin and tilting his head in the harsh glare of his flashlight.

“You could’ve died,” he says, without really looking at Casey, the ends of his voice rising with emotion Jones isn’t accustomed to hearing from Donnie, “That’s….I’m sorry, I’m…are you okay? How’s your head?”

Casey doesn’t say anything, listening to the Parliament that Dee has on low, filling the van with a soft sound of music. And it might be a concussion, or the way April has the blood of a cryptic bird being on her yellow sweater, or the glossy brightness in Donnie’s eyes, but Casey is seriously glad to be alive and not floating in something sinister and black. He grabs Dee’s hand and April’s face softens as she plops down and holds both their hands till they’re in an awkwardly formed circle of three crazy kids, listening to tracks from 1977, the dead body of the dead Birdman slowly burning outside the van and his army of talking ravens guarding it. 

**Author's Note:**

> fin. Hope everyone enjoyed this! And for more of this au, check out Werepirechick's oneshots for it!


End file.
